Vladimir Horowitz
(Владимир
Самойлович Горовиц), ( October 1, 1903 – November 5,
1989) was a classical pianist of Jewish origin. His use
of colors, technique and the excitement of his playing
are thought by many to be unrivalled, and his
performances of works as diverse as those of Domenico
Scarlatti and Alexander Scriabin were equally legendary.
He has a huge and passionate following and is widely
considered by many to be the very greatest pianist of
the 20th Century.

Born in Kiev, Ukraine,
Horowitz had piano lessons from an early age, initially
from his mother, who was herself a professional pianist.
In 1912 he entered the Kiev Conservatory, leaving in
1919, and playing the Piano Concerto No. 3 of
Rachmaninoff at his graduation. His first solo recital
followed in 1920. His stardom rose rapidly – he soon
began to tour Russia where he was often paid with bread,
butter and chocolate rather than money due to the
country's economic hardships. During the 1922-1923
season, he performed 23 concerts of eleven different
programs in Leningrad alone . In 1926 Horowitz made his
first appearance outside his home country, in Berlin. He
later played in Paris, London and New York City, and it
was in the United States that he eventually settled in
1940. He became a United States citizen in 1944.

In 1932 he played for the first time
with the conductor Arturo Toscanini in a performance of
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (the Emperor concerto).
The two went on to appear together many times, both on
stage and on record. In 1933, Horowitz married Wanda
Toscanini, the conductor's daughter. Despite receiving
rapturous receptions at his recitals, Horowitz became
increasingly unsure of his abilities as a pianist.
Several times he withdrew from public performances
(1936-1938, 1953-1965, 1969-1974, 1983-1985), and it is
said that on several occasions, Horowitz had to be
pushed onto the stage. After 1965 he gave solo recitals
only rarely.

Horowitz made many recordings,
starting in 1928 upon his arrival in the United States
and ending four days before his death in 1989. His early
recordings were made for HMV, the most notable of which
is his 1930 recording of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto
No. 3 with Albert Coates and the London Symphony
Orchestra, the first recording of that piece. In the
1940s and 1950s, Horowitz recorded for RCA Victor.
During this period, he made his first recording of the
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, under Toscanini. After
1953, when Horowitz went into retirement, he made a
number of acclaimed recordings at home, including discs
of Alexander Scriabin and Muzio Clementi. In 1962,
Horowitz began recording for Columbia Records, and it is
these recordings which are among the best known. The
most famous among them is his 1965 return concert at
Carnegie Hall and his 1968 performance from his
television special, Horowitz on Television, featuring
Scriabin's Etude Op. 8 No. 12 and Horowitz's own
Variations on a Theme from Bizet's Carmen, the most
famous of his piano transcriptions along with the Stars
and Stripes Forever. From 1965 until 1982, many of
Horowitz's recordings were done live.

After another brief retirement from
1983 until 1985 (he was playing in a drugged state and
as a result, memory lapses and loss of physical control
occurred during his tour of America and Japan), Horowitz
returned to recording and occasional concertizing. In
1986, Horowitz made a return to the Soviet Union to give
a series of concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. In the new
atmosphere of communication and understanding between
the USSR and the USA, these concerts were seen as events
of some political, as well as musical, significance. The
Moscow concert was recorded and released, entitled
Horowitz in Moscow. Vladimir Horowitz died in New York
of a heart attack. He was buried in the Toscanini family
tomb in Cimitero Monumentale, Milan, Italy.

Sviatoslav Richter
(Святосла́в
Теофи́лович Ри́хтер) (March 20, 1915 – August 1,
1997) was a Soviet pianist of German extraction.
Sviatoslav Richter can be said to be one of the most
legendary and fascinating pianists of the 20th century.
He was well known for his vast repertoire, effortless
technique and poetic phrasing.

Richter was born in
Zhitomir in Ukraine but grew up in Odessa. Unusually, he
was largely self-taught although his organist father
provided him with a basic education in music. Richter
learned mostly by playing the masterworks of the
repertoire, including the piano scores of Wagner's music
dramas. He started to work at the Odessa Conservatory
where he accompanied the opera rehearsals. He gave his
first recital in 1934 at the engineer club of Odessa but
did not formally study piano until three years later,
when he enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory, which
waived the entrance exam for the young prodigy after it
was clear he would not pass. He studied with Heinrich
Neuhaus who also taught Emil Gilels, and who claimed
Richter to be "the genius pupil, for whom he had been
waiting all his life". In 1940, while still a student,
he gave the world premiere of the Sonata No. 6 by Sergei
Prokofiev, a composer with whose works he was ever after
associated. He also became known for skipping compulsory
political lessons at the conservatory and being expelled
twice during his first year.

In 1949 he won the
Stalin Prize, which lead to extensive concert tours in
Russia, Eastern Europe and China. The West first became
aware of Richter through recordings made in the 1950s.
He was not allowed to tour the United States until 1960,
but when he did, he created a sensation. Touring,
however, was not Richter's forte. He preferred not
having to plan concerts years in advance, and in later
years took to playing in small, often darkened halls,
sometimes with only a small lamp lighting his piano. He
died in Moscow while studying for a concert series he
was to give.

Richter's repertoire
spanned virtually all the major works of the piano
repertoire. Among his noted recordings are works by
Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian
Bach, Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Sergei Prokofiev,
Sergei Rachmaninoff and countless others. He is said to
be the finest interpreter of the piano works of Robert
Schumann. He gave the premiere of Prokofiev's Sonata no.
7 (which he learned in just four days before staging a
performance of the work), and Prokofiev dedicated his
Sonata no. 9 to him. Apart from playing solo he also
enjoyed playing chamber music with partners such as
David Oistrakh, Benjamin Britten, Pierre Fournier and
Mstislav Rostropovich. He had unusually large hands,
capable of taking a "twelveth".

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (January 5, 1920 – June 12, 1995) was
an Italian classical pianist. He began music lessons at
the age of three. At ten he entered the Milan
Conservatory. At age 18 he began his professional
career by entering the Ysa˙e International Festival,
where he placed seventh. A year later he would earn his
first fame in an international festival held in Geneva
where he was acclaimed as "a new Liszt" by pianist
Alfred Cortot, a presiding judge. He has been regarded
as among the most commanding and individual piano
virtuosos of the 20th century among names such as
Horowitz and Richter. He is often considered the most
important Italian pianist after Ferruccio Busoni.

Other discographical
highlights include live performances in London of
Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and Chopin's Sonata No. 2.
His pairing of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G and
Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 4 is thought to be one
of the greatest concerto recordings ever made, and his
Debussy series for DG is something of a benchmark, if
sometimes accused of being a little unatmospheric. His
repertoire was strikingly small for a concert pianist.

Michelangeli was famous
for last-minute cancellations of his concert recitals as
well as being an obsessive perfectionist at the
keyboard. His last concert took place on May 7, 1993 in
Hamburg. After an extended illness he died in Lugano.

"Crystalline perfection" ... "a
capricious perfectionist" ... "aloof, statuesque" -- all
terms sometimes used to describe Michelangeli. David Dubal once epitomized the
pianistic phenomenon called Michelangeli as "the merging
of mechanism with music". This is a perfect synthesis of
his craft.

Michelangeli is unquestionably one of the
most intellectual and fascinating pianists of the 20th
century. His playing is perfect and his
gesture is elegant and controlled. His playing looks
noble and effortless. He seems to figure for both the
attractiveness of the intellectual as an exclusive
vessel for understanding and reproducing Art.
Highly recommend these DVDs.

Emil Gilels (Э́миль
Григо́рьевич Ги́лельс) (October 19, 1916 – October 14,
1985) was a Ukrainian classical pianist of the Soviet
era. Gilels was born in Odessa to a musical Jewish
family; both his parents were musicians. He began
studying the piano at six under Yakov Tkach, making his
first public debut at the age of 12 in June 1929. In
1930 Gilels entered the Odessa Conservatory.

In 1933 Gilels won the
newly-founded All Soviet Union Piano Competition at age
16. After graduating from the Odessa Conservatory in
1935, he moved to Moscow, where he studied under the
famous piano teacher Heinrich Neuhaus until 1937. A year
later, at age 21, he won the Ysa˙e International
Festival in Brussels, beating such competitors as Arturo
Benedetti Michelangeli and Moura Lympany. He was the
winner of the prestigious Stalin Prize in 1946, the
Order of Lenin in 1961 and 1966 and the Lenin Prize in
1962. Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 8 was
dedicated to Gilels and he performed it first on
December 30, 1944, in the Great Hall of the Moscow
Conservatory.

Gilels was universally
admired for his superb technical control and burnished
tone. His interpretations of the central German-Austria
classics formed the core of his repertoire, in
particular Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, but he was
equally illuminative in Scarlatti, Bach as well as
twentieth-century music like Debussy, Bartók and
Prokofiev.

Claudio Arrau
(February 6, 1903–June 9, 1991) was a Chilean-American
pianist, of world fame for his interpretations of a huge
repertory spanning from the baroque to 20th-century
composers. He is considered one of the greatest pianists
of the 20th century.

He was a child prodigy,
giving his first concert at age 5. At age 7 he was sent
on a Chilean government grant to study in Germany, where
he was a pupil of Martin Krause, who had studied under
Franz Liszt. At the age of 12 he could play Liszt's
Transcendental Etudes, considered to be one of the most
difficult sets of works ever written for the piano.

He recorded the complete
piano music of Robert Schumann, and edited his works for
publication. He is also famous for his recordings of
Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, and Debussy, among
others. He played with style and passion, although often
with a seemingly "untidy" technique; he was more
musician than technician. He is said to have had a warm
persona, and his playing is consistent with this
description. In particular his rich, weighty tone, which
has been likened to vintage Burgundy wine, lends his
interpretations a distinctive voice. Although he often
played with slower and more deliberate tempi from his
middle age, Arrau had a reputation for being a virtuoso
early in his career.

In February 1979, Arrau
became a naturalized citizen of the United States. At
the time of his death in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, he was
working on a CD recording of the complete works of Bach
for keyboard.

Arthur Rubinstein
(January 28, 1887 – December 20, 1982) is often regarded
as the greatest pianist of his generation, and received
international acclaim for his performances of Chopin and
his championing of Spanish music.

Born in Łódź, Poland to
a Jewish family, and studied in Warsaw. He made his
debut in Berlin in 1900, followed by appearances in
Germany and Poland and further study with Paderewski. In
1904, he went to Paris, where he met the composers
Ravel, Dukas, and the violinist Jacques Thibaud. He also
played Saint-Saëns' G minor Piano Concerto in the
presence of the composer. Rubinstein made his New York
debut at Carnegie Hall in 1906, and thereafter toured
the United States, Austria, Italy, and Russia. In 1912,
he made his London debut.

During World War I
Rubinstein lived mainly in London, England, accompanying
the violinst Eugčne Ysa˙e. From 1916 to 1917, he toured
Spain and South America, developing an enthusiasm for
the music of Granados, Albéniz, de Falla, and
Villa-Lobos. He was the dedicatee of Villa-Lobos' "Rudepoema",
one of the most difficult piano pieces ever written.
During World War II, Rubinstein lived in the United
States and became a naturalized citizen in 1946. He
refused to play in post-war Germany because of the Nazi
extermination of members of his family. Although best
known as a soloist, Rubinstein was also an outstanding
chamber musician, partnering with such luminaries as
Henryk Szeryng, Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
In addition to Chopin, he also recorded the music of
Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Dvořák.

He retired from the
stage in 1976, as his eyesight and hearing were rapidly
deteriorating. He became totally blind in later life.
Rubinstein died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1982 at age
95. His ashes were interred Israel.

Glenn Herbert Gould(September 25, 1932 – October 4, 1982) was a
celebrated Canadian pianist, noted especially for his
recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard music.
Gould's first piano teacher was his mother. From the age
of ten he began attending the Royal Conservatory of
Music in Toronto, where he studied piano with Alberto
Guerrero, organ with Frederick C. Silvester and theory
with Leo Smith.

In 1945, he gave his
first public performance (on the organ) and the
following year he made his first appearance with an
orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in a
performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. His
first public recital followed in 1947 and his first
recital on radio came with the CBC in 1950. This was the
beginning of his long association with radio and
recording. In 1957, Gould toured the Soviet Union,
becoming the first North American to play there since
the Second World War. His concerts featured Bach and the
serial music of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, which
previously had been suppressed in the Soviet Union
during the era of Socialist Realism. Gould returned to
the West keen to popularize the music of Russian
composer Dmitri Shostakovich. On April 10, 1964, Gould
gave his last public performance in Los Angeles,
California. For the rest of his life he focused on
making recordings, writing and broadcasting.

His playing had great
clarity, particularly in contrapuntal passages. Many
listeners found Gould's own approach to Bach to be
refreshing, even revelatory. Gould had a formidable
technique that enabled him to choose very fast tempos
while retaining the separateness and crisp clarity of
each note. Despite its shortcomings in Romantic period
music, Gould's one-of-a-kind technique yielded excellent
results in Baroque period music, The music of Bach
formed the core of his repertoire, and it is for his
interpretations of Bach's works that he is most
remembered. He died in Toronto in 1982 after suffering a
massive stroke and is buried in Toronto's Mount.

Alfred Cortot
(September
26,
1877 –
June 15,
1962) was a French
pianist and
conductor. He is one of the most popular 20th
century musicians, renowned for his poetic insight in
Romantic period piano works.

Cortot studied at the
Paris Conservatoire with
Emile Decombes (a pupil of Chopin), He made
his debut at the
Concerts Colonne in
1897, playing
Beethoven's
Piano Concerto No. 3. Between 1898 and 1901 he was a
choral coach, and subsequently assistant conductor, at
the
Bayreuth Festspiele, and in 1902 he conducted the
Paris premiere of
Götterdämmerung by
Wagner. He formed a concert society to perform
Wagner's
Parsifal,
Beethoven's
Missa solemnis,
Brahms'
German Requiem, and new works by French composers. In
1905, Cortot formed a trio with
Jacques Thibaud and
Pablo Casals, which established itself as the
leading piano trio of its era. From
1907 to
1923 Cortot taught at the
Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included
Haskil,
Lipatti, and
Perlemuter. In
1919 he founded the
École Normale de Musique de Paris . His courses in
musical interpretation were legendary. He toured as a
pianist all over the world, also appearing as guest
conductor of many orchestras. He died in
Lausanne.

As a pianist, Cortot was
particularly noted for his interpretations of
Frédéric Chopin and
Robert Schumann, and he made editions of both those
composers' music, editions notable for Cortot's
meticulous commentary on technical problems and matters
of interpretation. Many connoisseurs consider him to be
the greatest interpreter of their works. Cortot was among the
very greatest musicians of the century and represented
the end of an era. He is considered the last exponent of
a personal, subjective style that deprecated precise
technique in favor of intuition, interpretation and
authentic spirit.

Jorge
Bolet (November 15, 1914–October 16, 1990) was a
pianist and conductor. Bolet was born in Havana in Cuba
and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in
Philadelphia, where he himself taught from 1939 to 1942.
His teachers included Leopold Godowsky and David
Saperton.

In 1942 Bolet joined the US Army and was sent to
Japan. While there, he conducted the Japanese premiere
of The Mikado. He provided the piano soundtrack
for the 1960 film about Liszt, "Song without End." He
came especially to prominence from the early 1970s
onwards and there was a stupendous recital at Carnegie
Hall, New York City, which set a seal on his reputation.
Bolet, "stung by years of neglect" , showed exactly what
he could do and his phenomenal playing can be heard on
CDs issued most recently by PHILIPS in their Great
Pianists Series. He later became Head of Piano at the
Curtis Institute, succeeding Rudolf Serkin, but retired
from this to concentrate once again on his career.

Bolet is particularly well remembered for his
performances and recordings of large-scale Romantic
music, particularly works by Franz Liszt and Frederic
Chopin. He also specialized in piano transcriptions and
unusual repertoire, including the fiendishly difficult
works of Godowsky, many of which Bolet had studied with
the composer himself.

Georges
(György)
Cziffra (November
5,
1921–January
17,
1994) was a
Hungarian
virtuoso
pianist. Many of his recordings are
regarded as controversial, claimed by
some to be showy and unmusical. There is
generally little doubt, however, that
Cziffra had superior technique and was a
master at
improvisation. Born in
Budapest, Cziffra became noted at
the age of five, improvising on popular
tunes in bars and circuses. His teachers
at the
Franz Liszt Academy included Ernö Dohnányi.

An attempted escape from
Soviet-dominated Hungary led to
imprisonment and forced labor in the
period
1950–1953.
In
1956, however, after further trials,
Cziffra was given permission to go to
Vienna — where he commenced his
international career — and later to
London and
France. He always performed with a
large leather wristband, as a memento of
his years in labor. Georges Cziffra
died in
Senlis, France, 72 years old, from a
heart attack resulting from series
of complications from
lung cancer due to smoking and
alcohol.

Cziffra is most known for his
extravagant recordings of
Franz Liszt's
virtuoso works. He also recorded
many of
Frédéric Chopin's compositions.
Cziffra also made a famous transcription
of
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's
Flight of the Bumblebee, written
in octaves and chords.